Our birthday month continues and we just keep on celebrating! We wanted to do something significant for our 30th so we reached out to AncestryDNA. We are lucky enough to have them headquartered nearby in Lehi, Utah. More than 10 million people have taken AncestryDNA and uncovered something new about themselves. Pretty cool, right? We wanted to learn where our family really came from and if our results would match up.
Prior to our visit to the Ancestry offices, we took the “AncestryDNA test”. They make it very simple by mailing you a clear tube that you spit into and then ship back to them. That’s it! By far the easiest test we’ve ever taken! Your results are then processed and AncestryDNA’s cutting-edge science compares your DNA to people all over the world. The neat thing about Ancestry is the focus they put on technology. Everything you are seeing in your results is the latest, absolute most accurate and up to date information. You can view all of your results online, which makes everything so convenient and easy. Our mom was the one who gave us the idea after doing her own AncestryDNA test. She loved it and encouraged the rest of the family to take their own. After going over her results, we knew we wanted to do it.
When we arrived at the Ancestry offices we had two big questions:
- Are we really identical twins with matching DNA?
- Where did our family come from?
Family Historian Lisa Elzey was kind enough to guide us through our results. She dropped several bombshells while taking us through our results. She told us that we are indeed identical twins, but our results did differ slightly, which was very surprising! She also took us through hundreds of years of our family’s history and migration, which was absolutely fascinating!
We found out that more than half of our ethnic makeup is from England and Wales. We were raised thinking that we were predominantly Scottish, so it was all very eye-opening. The most surprising ethnicity found was the fact that we are both 10% Swedish! It was so nice having Lisa there to explain the how and why of each of our numbers and percentages. The website is super interactive so you can dig as deep as you want into your heritage. You can watch our full reaction in the video at the bottom of this post.
If Lisa looks familiar, it’s because she is the family historian that has worked on many of the celebrity cases on the television show “Who Do You Think You Are?”. She said working with famous people is fun, but she has realized something – we are all just people who want to know who we are and where we came from.
We think everyone should take the test! There is something so grounding about looking into history and learning about the names, faces and stories of your family members. We are so grateful we had this amazing opportunity! Huge thanks to the team at Ancestry for partnering with us. Now we need to go work on our family trees.
If you want more information about getting your own AncestryDNA test, go here.
